Photo By Jared Eberhardt, from Flickr
I’m writing in response to recent comments made by Stephen Hawking. I have not the education nor the accolades that Hawking possesses. Please forgive my lack of such credentials, just as I forgive his lack of sound research or academic honesty.
Reknowned physicist and uber braniac Stephen Hawking has declared that “heaven” is not real, and belief in life after death is for those who are “afraid of the dark.” This comes from the same man who believes there are special dimensional portals in outer space called “wormholes” leading to alternate dimensions, and that there are hostile alien races out there ready to snatch up everything from our fossil fuels to our stockpiles of Red Bull and Twinkies.
For once, and maybe only this once, Hawking doesn’t have a clue as to what he is talking about. His data is all wrong. The Bible doesn’t teach that Christians will spend eternity in “heaven” at all. The Bible is all about the resurrection from the dead. Jesus rose from the dead. Believers in Christ will rise from the dead. Hawking’s argument is based on a limited understanding of Scripture when he disses on “heaven” as the summary of the Christian experience. It is almost as if he didn’t bother to do proper research before dismissing an entire belief system. That’s sloppy.
Death is the violent separation of the immaterial and material parts of humanity. It is the result of sin upon humanity. Our bodies return back to the dust of the earth from where we were formed in the first place, and our immaterial souls are rescued by the Grace of God in Christ, joining Him in heaven. Eternity (life after death) is a literal, physical, resurrection from the dead, where our immaterial and material parts are restored to God’s design; we once again become one. No aliens. No holes in space to secret worlds. Just an all powerful God rescuing humanity from our own self-imposed destruction.
Stephen Hawking will never read this blog, and I will never have an opportunity to ask this brilliant man some questions. But is my faith in the power of God somehow more of a “fairy tale” than Hawking’s trust in unseen and undetected matter? Is my belief in an eternal and omnipotent God that created all that there is out of nothing to be downgraded as myth, while quantum physics, an M-Theory trump card to explain anything without God, & time travel are lauded as scientifically plausible, all the while doing nothing to clear up the glaring dilemma of how SOMETHING came to exist of out NOTHING? Is the human brain really just a computer as Hawking says, which ceases to function when the components wear out?
Again, Stephen Hawking is much more respected than I am, and his words carry weight with many in academia. However, I ask that you forgive my low station just as I forgive his ignorance. Science has changed dramatically over just the last few hundred years. Christian orthodoxy has not. Which is more foolish: to completely dismiss the existence of “God” or to include Him as a possibility?
Daniel,
I have never been too impressed with Stephen Hawking. I think he gets more attention than he deserves because of his physical situation. But, one thing has always amazed me about him and guys like him. I would think that guys like Stephen Hawking that seem to have such an amazing understanding of physics and the natural sciences would be the ones touting intelligent design the most. How can they miss it? I get excited when I figure out how they designed my car and where the oil filter is. I can’t imagine understanding how DNA works, but I can appreciate the complexity of the design.
I watched an interview with one of the premier molecular biologists who was very involved with mapping the human genome. He was going into great detail how DNA worked, how series of switches could be flipped to cause a change in a particular human attribute. It was fascinating. He said that it was proof positive of evolution…to me, it is proof positive of intelligent design. Finally, he was asked if he believed in God, and he said categorically no. I just sat there dumbfounded. I emailed the guy at his Genome Foundation to ask a few basic questions, like: knowing what you know, how can the origin of even the simplest life form be explained? Or, how does genetic information get created out of nothing? I never got a response.
Just last night I was watching a documentary on Evolution versus Creationism. The most interesting thing to me was how passionate the Evolution Scientists were. They seemed to worship evolution the same way you and I worship God. I thought, for what? Is it so important for them to prove that God doesn’t exist that they would devote their whole life to trying? Personally, I think they are only proving that God does exist…so for that, I am thankful for their vain efforts.
Anyway, keep up the great Blogs, and Happy Easter.
Steve and Carm
Thanks Steve. Quantum Physics has been used to explain the origin of matter appearing from one place to another, but the the complete origin of matter from nothing.